The Dying Genius
by JuweWright
Summary: Based on ACD's "The Dying Detective" but written in today's "Sherlock" style with the occasional (very slight) bit of fluff. Similar to the writing in "The Reigate Stockholders". John's POV... Mrs Hudson comes to John's clinic with alarming news: Sherlock has contracted a terrible illness and might be dying...
1. Chapter 1

The Dying Genius

A./N. This is going to be based on the canon- story "The Dying Detective" following pretty much the same pattern of interweaving old with new that I already used in "The Reigate Stockholders." Hope you like it... and if you like it, please leave a comment ;-)

„Dr John Watson. He's my tenant, well, one of my tenants. I need to speak to him immediately"

"But the doctor is seeing a patient, Ma'am."

"Don't Ma'am me, young lady and I promise you, he will thank you very much if you disturb him now and get him out here. I need to talk to him, I am worried..."

I heard the voice of Mrs Hudson through the door of my room where I had been examining old Mr Joshua who was the latest victim of this years' influenza virus. He would survive it, but his lung sounded like a box of nails and I got the impression that he had been lying when he had put the cross at "non smoker" on the form I had given him to fill out. But as I was used to having a nicotine addict at home who could turn into quite a beast if he did not get his patches or – in some cases, when even patches did not do the job – his tobacco in time, I had given up quarrelling with my patients about smoking. I was just tired of going through it over and over again with Sherlock.

I told Mr Joshua to get his shirt back on and walked out into the waiting room. Mrs Hudson looked flushed as if she had come here in quite a hurry and she looked genuinely concerned. I found myself wondering what my companion had blown up in her kitchen this time, but before I could ask anything she was already talking away.

"Oh John, I am glad I got you. You know I usually try to ignore what happens around your flat..."

I thought about the smell of Sherlock's chemical experiments his violin-playing in the middle of the night, the strange people staggering up to our flat, sometimes bleeding on her carpet and all of his strange habits. Mrs Hudson had nerves of steel and for some unknown reason she seemed to be quite fond of Sherlock Holmes although she had raised his rent again after he had been shooting the wall in our living room out of boredom. She had specified it was a raise on his side of the contract only and did in no way affect me. I had let her talk on without really listening and now suddenly was thrown back into the present by an alerting exclamation.

"He is dying, John", she said. "I know you have not noticed because you've been working night shifts at the Hospital to help out with all the people who got that new flu, but he has been constantly deteriorating for the last three days and I feel like I need to get you involved now or it's going to be too late."

I put on my jacket absentmindedly and was already walking out of the clinic signalling to the receptionist I would be back as quick as possible, whilst our landlady continued to tell her story.

"He did not want me to fetch a doctor. Told me there was no need. But this morning, I just could not leave him like that. He looks like that skull on the mantelpiece, all skin and bones and his eyes are shining like a madman's. He's running a fever I guess. I told him there was no possibility of letting him go on without seeing a GP and I would have him see a doctor whether or not he allowed me to, so he finally allowed me to come and get you. But we have to be quick. He looks like he's not far from pushing daisies anymore."

She sounded horrified which was enough to have me incredibly worried. Mrs Hudson knew Sherlock, she knew his ways. She knew he did not eat or sleep or talk for days on end from time to time. So, if she thought he might not see another day, she might as well have a point. I borrowed my hands in my pockets and walked over to the tube station asking for more details.

"Oh I don't know much about these things John. He has been working on that case in Rotherhithe last weekend and when he came back, he was already sick as a dog. Took to his bed almost immediately and hasn't moved ever since. He's not eating or drinking either. I mean I am used to him not eating much, but he must be dehydrated by now. And he's sweating and sometimes mumbling strange things."

"Good God! Why didn't you call me earlier?"

"He didn't allow me to arouse you. You know how he can be. I swear he was wielding that pistol he shot the wall with when I bade him to let me fetch you yesterday. But the way he is today, he could not have pulled the trigger had he tried to... you'll see when we get there. I really think he might be dying."


	2. Chapter 2

A./N.: Here comes the second part. Have to admit, this is more difficult to update than I thought but it's immense fun.

_Short explanations on lab-talk: There are three levels of safety in bio-labs. S1 is nothing much, you need to have negative pressure in the room so stuff that gets into the air does not leave the room but is sucked in I think, but it's really lax. I work in an S1 lab at the moment and we are even allowed to open the windows. The lab I worked in before that was S2. We handled viruses there, but only "nice" ones like herpes and influenza that had been treated to be less contagious than the wildtype. You only open the viruses under a clean bench which is a table with a glass-hood. The glass hood has an opening at the front which is wide enough for your hands to go in so you can handle stuff. The air in the hood can be directed in different manners depending what kind of work you are doing. For viruses you have a closed system with a sterile filter for incoming and a sterile filter for the outgoing air, so that neither your product nor your colleagues have any issues. Finally you have S3 labs which are for SARS, the pocks and other nice things. These are the ones you see in movies, where people wear funny suits and the clean benches have two holes with rubber-gloves in them, so you don't have any real opening. So... dear people: find out what bad laboratory practice is by the example of your favourite detective..._

Sherlock looked indeed like a living skeleton. In the dim light of a foggy November day his bedroom had a gloomy air and what I saw when I stepped closer to his bed, was quite nerve-wrecking. His face looked wasted and gaunt and his eyes were bloodshot. He clearly was running a fever, his hollow cheeks flushed, lips encrusted, black locks damp with sweat. The thin hands with the long, neat fingers were twitching on the duvet and his voice, when he finally spoke, sounded hoarse.

He lay without moving when I entered the room but as soon as he recognized me, he tried to sit himself up. I could not help but notice he failed in the attempt and with a chill in my heart saw him sink back into the pillows.

"There you are. Well, John, I seem to have contracted quite a bit of an ailment", he smiled. Only Sherlock Holmes managed to smile in a moment like this.

"F*** Sherlock!", I uttered and wanted to step closer to get a better impression of his disease.

"Stand back!", he cried out immediately, raising his hand in a defensive gesture. His voice had taken on a tone which I only knew from moments of utter crisis – moments when there had been no case and no nicotine for quite a while.

"If you come any closer, I will send Mycroft a text to immediately get you out of this house and the whole of 221B turned into a quarantine area."

"But why?", I was flustered. I had seen worse than this, although the sight of my best friend lying there unable to get up was pretty hard to take. I was a doctor, a medical man, I wanted to help.

Suddenly his manner changed completely, all the demanding air fell off him like a mask and what was left of him lay in front of me raw, tired and helpless.

"Please, it's for your own good. I don't want to pass this on to you. I have been investigating it turns out to be quite a deadly mix of bird-flu and the new corona-virus that somehow jumped over from bats to humans and is causing all these people to die in the middle-east."

I stared at him.

"Wait a second. You were pottering around with viruses in the lab at St Bart's`?"

"They didn't know what I was doing."

"Well that's the striking point. The lab at St Bart's is classified S1, to handle stuff like that SARS virus you need at least S2 or even S3 status. You probably didn't even use a clean bench when you were handling it, did you?"

He sighed and brushed his hair back.

"John, they did not know and I don't care. The point is, I spilled some of it by accident and it seems to have been enough to... finish me. Stand back!"

But he could not keep me from doing my duty. I would not have stood back and worried about possible contagion had it been a stranger lying in front of me. His being my friend made the case even clearer. I would not stand back. I would act.

He reached for his phone to send the text to Mycroft as he had threatened to do but I snatched it from his powerless hands and held it out to Mrs Hudson who was still standing in the doorway.

"Put that somewhere safe, will you?", I asked her. "And I would appreciate if you could make some soup for our patient."

She nodded, obviously happy to be able to help and vanished from the room.

"John", it was no more than a whisper.

"I will have no more of it. You are behaving like a child and now I will treat you like one. You will eat something and you will drink something and you will have me try to help you and there is no discussion."

He looked me straight in the eyes and for a moment I was dazzled and unable to think. This happened from time to time. He could be quite mesmerizing.

"John you won't be able to do anything. Just listen to me and use your brains. I just told you it's a new combined virus which comes from a fusion between a corona virus and a type of influenza. I am absolutely convinced you are a great GP and you do a great job and I trust you endlessly but this is a problem you can't solve."

I thought for a moment and had to admit he was right. I was not a specialist. I could handle influenza when I knew what type it was and how it had come to pass and someone else had invented a jab to prevent it. But I was not a virologist.

"So... who could help you?", I asked, hoping Sherlock would in his long career as consulting detective have come across someone who had a bit more knowledge in that field. I tried to remember who of my colleagues had been fond of immunology. "I could fetch Jasper Meek or Penrose Fisher... or Doctor Ainstree, she was on the team who developed the swine flu vaccine. Yes I guess, I'll get her. She'll know how to handle this."

I turned on the spot to go out and call Melissa Ainstree immediately but Holmes – with an incredible force that came from I-know-not-where – leapt to his feet and banged the door shut, turning the key and throwing it under his bed before his knees gave way and he collapsed into my arms.


	3. Chapter 3

_A./N. As someone remarked quite rightly: No, John is not staying away from Sherlock. That was one of the things I could not leave as they were in the canon story, because John is much too badass to blindly obey a foolish order like that. Just as Sherlock would not miss being on the "Baskerville" case from the beginning (whilst Mr Holmes in the book leaves Watson to go alone first and only turns up in the end to solve the case). There will be a couple more suprises to come for sure, so bear with me. ;-) Comments are super-appreciated. And before you ask: I am pretty sure cross-breeding a corona-virus with genuine swine-flu is almost impossible as they have different replication cycles, but there's the freedom of imagination and with science developing so quickly, it might not be that far-fetched either._

Dragging him to the bed, I wondered what made him that reluctant to get any help. He was half-conscious only and I noticed his t-shirt was actually soaked in sweat. His bed-sheets were damp too. There was no way he was going back in there.

"Okay", I said. "Let's get you showered and changed first and then I will call Melissa. Don't say anything. I am going to get the key now and then we'll get busy. I am not having you die on me from some strange virus without doing anything against it."

I got the key, propped my friend – who seemed much too lightweight for a man of his statue and much too obedient to not make me more and more worried – up against my good shoulder and half-dragged, half-walked him to the bathroom. I had seen Sherlock naked or almost naked quite a couple of times as he didn't give a toss about anything and sometimes just couldn't be bothered to either put clothes on in the morning or – more frequently – take his underwear with him into the bathroom when he took a shower. Instead he walked to and from his bedroom to the shower just as God had created him. If you happened to be around to see it – your loss! I had been around to see it quite a lot of times and you should think I had become used to seeing his lean figure in all its glory but stripping his clothes off whilst he sat on the toilet seat hardly able to move a limb still felt sort of awkward. I managed to lift him into the bath tub – Lord, his ribs were showing, he really seemed close to starvation - and helped him wash his hair. I tried not to think too much about what I was doing. He was a patient, I was a doctor. I was not supposed to have any problem with washing a patients hair but I was also not supposed to enjoy burying my hands in his black locks.

"I know whom you need to contact now", he murmured suddenly and looked up at me with a half smile.

"Who is it?", I asked eagerly.

He smiled again.

"Culverton Smith", he said. "Him and no-one else. He'll know."

I stared at him. Surely the name would have rung a bell if that man had any reputation in the medical field.

"Who?"

"Culverton Smith", he repeated. "He's a genius."

"Is he a doctor?", I asked.

Sherlock chuckled.

"Well, not in the sense that he has a degree as a medical man and sworn the Hippocratic oath, no. He happens to be a zoologist and he has worked with exactly the breed of bats which have contracted the corona virus originally. I remember he published a paper a couple of years ago which stated that the bats seemed to become ill from time to time but their health improved again after they drank the nectar of a plant. He has since conducted a lot of research about the _Rhododendron pipistrellum._He is a very methodical worker so you will probably not reach him in his study until six o'clock tonight but if you could persuade him to come here and enlighten us concerning the bat flu and its cure, I am sure he will be able to help me."

I wrote his speech down as a whole here as it is impossible to indicate in written language how often he had to stop mid-sentence to breathe heavily and how often his voice failed in him in the attempt to explain everything to me. When I helped him out of the bath tub his fingers clung to my arms with ferocity indicating every single movement was causing him pain. His appearance had worsened since I had arrived. The sweat had gone but he was shivering all over and his gaze seemed unfocussed, when I wrapped him in one of Mrs Hudson's huge bath towels – which she had bought two days after she had met a stark naked Sherlock on the stairs and almost fallen over backwards – he leaned against me for a moment and I could feel his body radiate heat. He still retained a certain jaunty gallantry in his speech though. To the last gasp he would always remain Sherlock the consulting detective, the genius, the high functioning sociopath.

"Tell him exactly how you have left me", he said. "Convey to him the very impression you have of my state. I am a dying man, dying and almost delirious. Have you ever wondered whether the whole bed of the ocean might actually be one solid mass of oysters? Ahhh. And did you know they eat kangaroos in Austria?"

I rubbed his back gently leading him out of the bathroom and back to his bed. Mrs Hudson had changed the sheets in our absence and as soon as I sat him down on the mattress he slumped down. I had to lift his legs in and pull the duvet up as he was too weak to do either.

"Australia", I corrected him. "They eat kangaroos in Australia. I don't know what they eat in Austria. I guess Kaiserschmarrn or something."

His lips were moving but I could not understand what he was saying. When I leaned over I finally understood his murmur: "Strange how the brain controls the brain."

I got up and closed the door silently. My hands were shaking and I needed to lean against the wall for a second and take a deep breath. He was dying. My friend was dying.

No.

I shook my head.

I would call this Culverton Smith man and tell him how things looked... or better go and fetch him in person.

"John!", he was straining his voice to be loud enough to reach me. I ran back into the bedroom immediately.

"What is it?"

"Culverton Smith", he whispered. "He... we are not on good terms. His nephew died and I... I had suspicions of foul play and I might have let it show. The boy died a horrible death. And now he has a grudge against me because I saw a suspect in him. I made a mistake. It was an accident, not murder. You... you must make him come here. Beg him on your knees if that helps, but get him here by any means. I might not have long..."

He trailed off again and I stood there staring at him, hands clutched into fists. I swore I would bring Culverton to save him and if it was the last thing I did in my life. I would plead and beg and if it didn't help – well I had been in the army. I owned a revolver. If things turned out to be difficult I would bring him here on gunpoint.

"Don't", murmured Sherlock shaking his head and I noticed I had been speaking my thoughts.

"Go there, 13th Lower Burke Street, and beg him to come and then come back before him. He will need his time to get here and... he might be too late. I don't want you... I want you to be here. No doubt there are natural enemies for the oysters who limit their increase; otherwise they would already have taken over the world. Oysters everywhere... horrible!"

I went over to his bed and rested my hand on his shoulder for a moment. I didn't know whether he noticed my touch. The fever was upon him. And it was stronger than ever. My friend Sherlock Holmes, whose mind was a hard drive full of useful information of incredible knowledge and sensible reasoning was babbling away about an oyster invasion.

I tried to call Culverton Smith but was informed by his secretary he had not shown up in the study yet and would not be available before 6pm. So Holmes had been right about the man's schedule. I tried to while away the time by reading one of the books on Holmes' bookshelf but could not bring myself to focus on the story. I strolled around the room restlessly, stood at his bedside and watched him struggle with the illness, then walked slowly round the room again. Sherlock was not the tidiest person in the world. Well, actually he was one of the messiest people I knew. I went over to his wardrobe to close one of the drawers when something caught my eye. Between his socks – which were sorted following Sherlock's personal colour-code like mine were since he had been bored and taken it out on my underwear-drawer – there was a nasal spray. A brand I had never seen before. As I had never seen Sherlock use one of those I suspected it might be his latest way of getting the nicotine his body craved, but just when I had stretched my hand out to examine it more closely, a dreadful wailing cry from the bed made me jump. It might have been heard well down the street and made my hair bristle. I turned around to find Sherlock lying on the floor in a tangled bedsheet staring at me with bloodshot eyes.

"Don't touch it!", he screamed like a madman. "You know I hate to have my things touched, John. You know I hate it. And still you do it all the time. Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

His manner of speaking wounded me although I knew he did not mean it, knew it was the fever speaking. I did not say good bye before I shut the door behind me with a bang thinking that of all ruins the destruction of the noble mind is the worst. I looked at my wristwatch and found it was almost half past 5. I needed to get going anyways and to have something to do would calm me down a bit.

Mrs Hudson was standing in the hallway when I left the house. She had been weeping. I explained whom I was about to bring to 221B and she hugged me and sent me on my way.

"Look after him", I told her, nodding towards our flat. "He's out of his mind but perhaps in his current state he is more likely to accept being fed than if he was himself."


	4. Chapter 4

_A./N. Sooo... here comes part 4. There are 2 more parts to the thing. I strayed a bit from the path in terms of the Culverton Smith character. In the canon he is very different... but I liked to imagine him as a spoiled geeky person (and make him younger than he is in the original). A bit more of surprising detail in here, too, I guess. Hope you like it. Let's go! _

I was cursing the third cab that had passed me by with its light on but ignoring my wave as usual, when a familiar car stopped in front of the house.

"How is he?", Greg Lestrade asked as soon as he had turned the motor off and opened the door.

"Ill", I said. "Very ill actually."  
He looked at me and for a second I thought there was a pang of sadness in his eyes.

"Donovan was saying something like that. Said Molly had tried to call him bout a corpse this morning and Mrs Hudson had told her he was not well."

I sighed.  
"It pretty much looks like he might be dying."

Greg stared at me.

"Are you serious?"

"As serious as I ever was."  
"Where are you headed?"

I told him and he nodded.

"I'll give you a lift. Faster than the tube. And you'll be back in no time. Guess you don't want to leave him alone for too long if it's as bad as you say."

I realized he was right. I did not want to leave Sherlock alone for a single second. But I needed to fetch the miracle man from the middle-east. Greg did not talk whilst driving but I noticed he was drumming on the steering wheel at every single red light. He also did not give any consideration to tempo limits and by that arrived at Lower Burke Street – which turned out to be a line of fine houses in the borderland between Notting Hill and Kensington – five minutes early.

The particular house I was looking for had an air of old aristocracy. There were old-fashioned iron railings, a massive folding-door and a lot of shining brass work. A security guard appeared, one of these guys who wear suits but look like they wear armour, asked what I wanted and bade me follow him inside.

He left me to wait in the entrance hall which was huge. The walls were covered with horrible green wallpaper. A dog – a Pekinese or some other over-bred mini-pet which had nothing to do with its noble wolfish ancestors any more – watched me from one of the corners but could not be bothered to say hello.

I could hear the security announce my coming to someone on the upper floor and in the next moment hear Mr Culverton Smith's voice for the first time, a high-pitched over-drawn squeal that was supposed to sound upper-class but only made me cringe as it was a mixture of Perez Hilton and the sound a cat makes when you step onto its tail.

"Who is this person? What does he want? Dear me, how often have I told you I don't want to be disturbed when I am working?"

The guard murmured some explanation but Culverton Smith cut him short.

"Nonsense. I won't see him. I am busy. Tell him to come back tomorrow morning if it's really important. But not before eleven."  
Again a murmur.

"Tell him he can come in the morning or he can stay away. I am in the middle of an experiment and can't come down."

I was already clenching my fists. This peacock...

The picture of Sherlock tossing upon his sickbed talking about oysters was still vivid in my mind. He didn't have much time left and I was pretty sure he did not have a whole night. It was not a time for peacocky idiots to be snobbish. Before the security guard returning from the upper floor had opened his mouth, I had run past him and was up the stairs through a door in a white-walled room that looked a lot like the lab in St Bart's and had the thin geeky type who had to be the very person I had come to see tackled to the ground.

"What is this?", he asked with his high-pitched voice, struggling to free himself.

"I am sorry", I said, standing up, casually drawing my revolver, "but the matter cannot and will not be delayed. Sherlock Holmes..."

The mention of the name rather than the drawing of the gun made the guy flinch. The anger faded from his face and made room for something tense and alert.

"Have you come from Holmes?", he asked.

"I have just left him."

"And what is the purpose of your visit?", he asked.

"Sherlock Holmes is terminally ill", I managed to say. "He might be dying and he is convinced you are the only one who can save him."

The door in my back was opened and the security guard joined us. He could not see the pistol and Culverton made no attempt to have me arrested but signalled the intruder everything was okay.

"I find this matter is really demanding my attention right now", he told the guard. "You can walk the dog now."  
As soon as the guard had left he motioned to one of the chairs in the room and turned to pull up one for himself. For a second I thought he was grinning but put it down to his nervousness. I lowered the pistol to show him I was not an actual threat and when he looked up again his features showed nothing but genuine concern.

"I am sorry to hear he is unwell", he said. "I only know Mr Holmes through some business dealings we had but I have a lot of respect for his talents. He is an amateur detective just as I am an amateur in biomedicine. For him the villain for me the virus", he continued pointing to a small bottle which held a yellowish fluid. "Powerful treatments for horrible diseases distilled from natures green inhabitants."

"It was on account of that special knowledge of yours that he asked me to fetch you", I explained. "He thinks that you are the only man in London, possibly the only man in the world who could help him."

He frowned.

"Why should he think that I – a man of no medical training – could help him out of his trouble?"  
"Because you have a profound knowledge of a certain SARS-related corona virus originally contracted by bats in the middle-east", I responded.

"But why should he have contracted that disease? It is not spreading very easily from human to human and he has not been in the area, where the animals live that carry it."  
"He has done some experiments on a new virus, some fusion-product of the bat virus and genuine swine flu."

Culverton Smith smiled and began to fiddle around with a pipette, klicking the throw-off button again and again.

"Oh, so we are talking about the hybrid here", he nodded. "I bet he's not as close to pushing daisies as you think he might be. How long has he been ill?"

"About three days. That's what our landlady tells me. I have not been around for a while. The work..."

"Is he delirious?"

"He talks about the world being invaded by oysters."

He leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"It sounds serious. And it would be inhuman not to answer his call. I really don't like to be interrupted when I am working. But I will make an exception. I will come and see him. I will need to collect a few things, so don't hesitate to go ahead. I bet you don't want to leave your companion alone for too long."

The way he stressed the word companion and the way he winked at me, made my usual retort make its way to my lips. But I did not say it. There was no need to keep telling everyone we were not a couple when nobody seemed to care what I said. I decided to leave Mr Culverton Smith with his false perception and rushed out to get back into the car, back to Baker Street, back to Sherlock.

"Did you convince him to come and have a look at him?", asked Greg before he let me out in front of Speedy's Sandwich Bar. I nodded.

"Good."

He hesitated for a second.

"Call me as soon as you have news... whatever they may be. Okay?"

I nodded in consent, happy to know someone outside of our house was worried too.


	5. Chapter 5

_A./N. So... I guess I will put the last part up tomorrow or the day after. Enjoy! And tell me what you think about it! (Shamelessly begging for comments). _

When I came back to the flat I found that Holmes was slightly better. He was not hallucinating anymore and the fever had also gone down a bit. His face looked ashen now but he was awake and his mind was working again and although his voice was still hardly working, it was full of life.

"Did you see him, John?"

"He's coming. Might be here in half an hour."

"Admirable, John. You must have been very convincing."

My hand brushed carelessly over the jacket pocket that I carried the revolver in.

"I guess I was."

"Did he ask what the matter was?"

"He did. I told him about your being careless in the lab..."

"Well, John, you've done good. Just help me with a few things, will you?"

I stared at him in confusion.

"There's a bottle of water and a glass next to the writing desk. Just pour a glass out, will you? No, don't give it to me, leave it there. And would you mind handing me my nasal spray? I get the feeling my nose is quite blocked."

I gave it to him without looking at it remembering how he had scolded me for touching it earlier on. I did not even want to know what it contained. If it was morphine so be it, he was sick enough to be allowed some painkilling drug.

"John?"

I sat down next to him on the bed. He was awake all right and the delirious state had worn off. No more talk about oysters for now. But he looked drawn and sick nonetheless. He held out his hand and I took it, brushed my fingers over the blue veins that lined the back of it. He was still trembling slightly and I asked him whether he was cold. He shook his head.

"I am fine, John, really. Just stay here, will you?"

We had been silent for a while when we heard a car pull up outside.

"That will be him", Sherlock said.

It was indeed Mr Culverton who entered the room five minutes later followed by a worried Mrs Hudson.

"Should I stay?", I asked Sherlock who was still clinging to my fingers. He shook his head. "Just come back as soon as it's over", he said. I needed to leave the room very quickly to conceal how horribly the thought of anything being over was to me.

Mrs Hudson led me down to her kitchen and sat a huge pot of steaming tea in front of me. Neither of us said a word and it was so quiet you could hear the clock ticking on the wall, when suddenly my phone rang. I saw Sherlock's name on the display and frowned, then clicked the green button and switched on the loudspeaker.

"... Do you know what illness you have contracted?", Mr Culverton Smith asked his voice as clear as if he was standing right in the kitchen.

"The same", coughed Sherlock.  
"You recognize the symptoms, I guess."

"I do."

"It might be exactly the same. Should not be too surprising. Might turn our bad for you. Victor died on the fourth day and he was much younger than you and did not have your... history. It was certainly, as you said yourself, very strange he should have contracted a disease like that, which originates in the middle-east, in the city of London. A disease also which was so similar to the one I had been studying. Coincidence? I remember you saying there were no coincidences and that it had to be cause and effect."

"You did it. And not only Victor."

"You can't prove anything, Mr Holmes. But you spread rumours about me, bad rumours. And rumours can kill a man's reputation. Ruining my reputation and then asking for my help do you actually think this is wise?"

Sherlock coughed again.

"Would you mind handing me that glass of water?"

"You're so near to death, my friend. So near to the end. But I will have you linger a bit longer. I want to have a word with you, that's why I will be nice this time and give you some water. Careful. That's right. Do you hear me?"

A groan indicating a "yes" from Sherlock.

I sat poised on my chair, ready to jump up any minute and rush upstairs.

"Please help me. The past is the past", he whispered. "I'll never think about it again. I will forget it. I promise. If you help me I will forget it."

"Forget what?"

"That your nephew is dead now because you left something lying about which you had intended for another purpose. I always knew there was an edge to the story that I had not yet grasped but I am getting there now. But I won't go the whole way. I will forget it."

Culverton laughed a short heartless laugh.

"You can do whatever you like. You won't see another day and therefore won't stand in the witness-box rather lie in quite a different kind of box with flowers towered around you and John Watson standing by crying his eyes out over your dead body. It doesn't matter whether you know how my nephew died or why he died. It is not him we are talking about it is you."

"Yes... yes..."

"Your boyfriend... he told me you contracted it in the lab at Bart's."

"That's the only place where it could have happened. I was working with it. I must have spilled it."

"Tut tut", I could hear Culverton move through the room. "You think you are smart, Mr Holmes. You are proud of your brain, your mind palace. You came across someone who is smarter than you now. What do you see, Holmes? If you think harder? What happened?"

Sherlock's voice was down to a rasp when he replied: "I can't think. My brain is not working any more. I have been talking gibberish about oysters taking over the world and I still think they might be up to something. For God's sake, help me!"

The last exclamation had been so desperate that it had made me jump. I was almost at the door, when Mrs Hudson pulled me back and shook her head.

"Yes, I will help you", Culverton said. "I will help you to understand how you contracted the disease. I want you to know before you bite the dust."

"Give me something to ease the pain, please!"

"Painkillers? Morphine for the old drug-addict? I can tell you it's painful. They all have cramps in the end and can't stop coughing anymore. Can you remember how it began now? When did the symptoms start?"

"I can't, I just can't..."

He coughed again, a coughing fit this time. Mrs Hudson looked me in the eye and mouthed the words "It's okay."

But nothing was okay. Sherlock was dying. Because... suddenly I realized what Mrs Hudson was indicating. Sherlock was dying because of something Culverton had done. And he was just getting the confession out of this posh brat in front of two silent witnesses. He was a genius. But a genius who would be no more if things turned out badly.

"Did anything come into your possession lately in an odd way?"

"Well... I got this nasal spray, it contains nicotine, it's like the patches but slightly stronger, it was sent to me by that company who... oh."

"You're getting there, aren't you?"

"I used it. On Saturday."

"And the coughing, the fever... when did it start?"

"On Sunday... the spray... right there on the bed-stand."

"So there it was and there it is no more. It will leave this room in my pocket and there will be no sign left of how this illness found its way to you. There goes the evidence. I am sorry, Mr Holmes. But you knew too much about my project. At first it was only about Victor but I found you sensed the bigger thing behind his unfortunate death. You knew that I had found a way to spread the disease. Usually it is not contagious and does only jump from animal to human. But with a slight alteration in the virus, a slight bit of genetic material that I borrowed from the swine flu, I was able to make it hazardous. I was able to turn it into a weapon. I gave it to all those who had laughed at my theories, sent them the nasal spray. Sometimes as a present from their favourite pharmacy sometimes it was even easier. It was the perfect murder. Victor was an accident though. He was a lovely child but he suffers from allergies. He started sneezing because of the dog and went rummaging around the house looking for nasal spray. He did not know. And I found out too late what had happened. You can't stop the disease once it's past a crucial point. If a human being contracts it, you have 24 hours max to get the vaccine into your system. You see now, Mr Holmes. Even if I gave the plant-extract to you, you would not survive this. You are already in your grave."

Sherlock whispered something inaudible.

"What is that? Get you what? Your nicotine patches? Who could withhold a last request from a dying man. Anything else as I am already standing?"

"A cigarette and a match, but you will have to argue with John about that."

Sherlock's voice was completely changed. It almost sounded normal. And definitely not close to death.

"You can come up now, John", I heard him say through the phone. "I guess we've got him."

I sprinted up the stairs followed by a slightly – but only slightly – slower Mrs Hudson. When I threw open the bedroom door, I was surprised by a smiling Sherlock who was holding a revolver at Culverton Smith's head and looked quite alive and almost healthy.

"I am really sorry, John, but I needed you to be convincing. Mrs Hudson. Be so good and get that soup up here, I have not been eating or drinking anything for at least four days until that chap here got me that glass of water. John... would you please hold that for me for a second? He shoved the gun into my hands and I kept it pointed at Culverton Smith. Sherlock ripped open the package with the nicotine patches and one-two-three had already stuck them on his arm before I could say anything.

"So. That's better", he said and got his phone out.

"Are you texting Lestrade?", I asked.

He nodded.

"Will you explain to him that I did not have a clue you were faking...", I made a gesture with my free hand, "... all of this, dying, the fever, hallucinating about oysters?"

"I particularly loved the oyster part", Sherlock grinned.


	6. Chapter 6

_A./N. Thanks everyone for reading! This is the last part. Enjoy! (Oh and if you think there's some Sherlock OOC... I don't think so. Imagine this is a loooong time after Reichenbach - as it is in the canon - and we already saw Sherlock developing so much in terms of social behaviour in the first 2 series... so yeah, I believe this is quite a possible reaction._

"I am arresting you on the charge of serial murder."

The handcuffs clicked and Donovan led the geeky scientist out of the room.

Lestrade sighed and shook his head.

"You forgot to add the attempted murder of one Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock said handing him a small plastic bag with the nasal spray in it.  
"You will find this contains a solution of the new influenza-fusioned bat corona virus. I examined it quite closely and it's enough to kill a person after one use. I was so free as to remove it from the prisoner's pocket again. It will come in helpful in the trial."

Greg smiled.

"I'm glad it was not true", he said and then, with a sideways glance to me he added something in a low voice I could not understand.

"I never needed this more", said Holmes after gulping down a cup of tea with one draught. The next moment he was diving into the soup Mrs Hudson had made. "However, you know that I have gone without eating for a couple of days before and it was fine, so I guess I can cope better than most other men could. It was a crucial point to impress Mrs Hudson and also you, John. I needed you to be absolutely convinced I was dying, because in any other case you would not have been able to not rouse Culverton's suspicion. You are a great friend, John, a good GP and a good soldier. But you are not an actor, that's why I needed to deceive you. But I feel sorry for it now."

He hesitated for a moment.

"Greg told me he drove you up to Lower Burke Street. He said you had every right in the world to beat me bloody."  
I took a sip of my own tea.

"I _have_ every right to beat you bloody, Sherlock." I responded. "But it's no fun if you are not in full strength."

He laughed heartily.

"So you forgive me?"

I sighed. Had we not been through enough together that he knew I would forgive him everything?

"I was wondering", I said, "how you managed to come across all feverish and ill. I mean, your temperature was definitely not in the normal range and you..."

He smiled at me.

"I have a profound knowledge of poisons, John. I know which ones you need to use in which quantity to produce a fever and a sweat without risks... well, almost without risks."

I stared at him.

"You _poisoned _yourself to make me believe you had been infected with a deadly virus?"

He shrugged.

"The tremor in my hands, the fact that I could not stand properly... they are all side-effects of a dose of Atropin and Scolotamin in combination with a bit of Strychnin."

I put down my cup.

"You are an idiot", I stated flatly.

"But you did not want me to die. Greg said you were panic-stricken."

I closed my eyes for a second.

"I... can't imagine losing you", I admitted. "You know I don't have much of a family. You and Mrs Hudson. That's what I have. That's where I belong. And you are the most annoying, idiotic, strange person I know but I... I don't want you to be different. I...", I stopped because I suddenly had a picture in my head, Sherlock grabbing my hand before I had left the room. There had been no need to do that to convince me of his near death but he had nonetheless done it.

Suddenly he got up, walked around my chair and quickly hugged me from behind.

"I don't have much of a family either", I heard his voice close to my ear. "That is... I have an older brother who is the British government when he's not playing British secret service... and he's a pain in the ass, if you think about it."

I could not help but smile.

"Promise me something?", I asked turning around. His eyes sucked me in again. What was it about these grey-green seas of mystery that always made me speechless?

"Depends."

"Never ever play the dying detective again to solve a case."

"Promise", he said, smiled, donned his coat and scarf in one fluent movement and headed off to meet Molly and the unknown body in the mortuary.


End file.
